Teaching Children To Be Safe Around Electricity

Every parent knows how much children are fascinated by holes and how they are drawn to wall sockets. Child proofing the home inevitably includes placing safety plugs into the sockets throughout the home. However, most children are equally attracted by electrical equipment and in their desire to copy their parents, need constant supervision to prevent injury or worse resulting from their inquisitive nature.

Your Children Are Never Too Young To Learn

Your children are never too young to learn how to be safe around electricity and it’s useful to constantly reinforce safety around electrical appliances as you are working around the house or playing with the children. Your children will watch you and listen to you and as you work around the house you will become their role model and they will love copying you and the way you act around potential danger in the home.

By reinforcing safety from babyhood, your children will grow up safety conscious and perhaps somewhat amazingly, to be aware of imminent dangers in their environment. Preschool children will need to have safety rules around the house applied consistently around the home and the consequences of not following these rules must be followed through each time the child acts or behaves in a way that is not considered appropriate or safe.

Further Reinforcement at School and Online

As a child enters school, many of these safety lessons will be reinforced in the classroom and during science lessons. As they begin to learn how electricity works and how it is conducted, they will be able to make safe decisions that will contribute to their understanding of how to stay safe when using electrical equipment.

Fun online activity sites can help to reinforce what you teach them and what they are learning at school, and most children love to interact with electricity in safe environments such as science museums that often include electrical shows as part of their exhibits. These not only create awe in children as they observe spectacular displays of electricity in action, but also provide excellent practical examples of how to avoid danger.

First Aid Lessons

All children should be taught how to deal with a situation where a person in the house has been electrocuted. There is a very real danger that a frightened child will touch an unconscious family member who has been electrocuted and will therefore be at great risk of being electrocuted themselves.

You should also teach your child to call for help before they touch an unconscious adult in the home, and ensure that you teach every member of the family how to make emergency calls correctly. Children as young as six and seven have been known to call ambulances and alert emergency services of dangers existing to themselves or their families. This has directly led to the saving of lives and the value of teaching these skills to children cannot be underestimated.

Electricity is an asset to modern society that most of us would find difficult to exist without in today’s modern world. However, its popularity means that it is a hazard that poses a significant risk to children of all ages and it’s essential that just as we teach children how to use appliances, we teach them also how to stay safe as they operate them.

This is a guest post. This article was written by Laura on behalf of energy comparison website uSwitch.com.

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